Trip to the Underworld
by InkCraft
Summary: A generic unedited story I wrote in high school. Based off of Legends of Kesmai


  
  
"Runes, runes, runes.... I should have brought my spellbook. I'll bet that those dabbling wizards in the Kesmai Lockers would pay dearly to look at some of these", Thaum said to himself as he studied an engraved pillar. To the untrained eye, these might have been the workings of a mad spider with a chisel. To the trained eye of a cleric, though, they held great amounts of value.  
Thaum Fizzlespell was probably the most mismatched cleric who ever lived. Heavily muscled and standing at nearly six feet tall, he looked much more like martial-artist or perhaps a lost eastern tourist. This was aided by the fact he actually was wearing a martial-artist's travel uniform and carried no visible weapons, unlike the rest of his peers did. A normal priest wore robes and carried some form of a staff or spellbook about with him, supposing that he ever left the sanctity of the monastery; Thaum found pleasure in pummeling things with his bare hands and feet and also in constantly being in danger.  
"Hey, Quantan! Where you at?", Thaum said as loud as he dared. He was in the UnderWorld on a trip to get the legendary Black Rapier with his wizard companion Quantan Amroth. Quantan was probably the worst and the best wizard in the history of all magic users since the beginning of time. He had a certain knack of getting killed at inopportune times, or casting the wrong spell into a group of allies rather than enemies. Naturally, he had few friends, since most tended to die at least once a week. Death was no huge thing, so long as cleric found and rezzed you before you began to get too nasty, but it tends to be rather annoying.  
Presently, a wall just down the corridor exploded into a shower of granite chips and lime dust, with a wizard hopping out just in time to trip over his robes and land head- first into the adjacent wall. He quickly raised himself to one knee, extended his arms, and began shouting in high arcane, the language of magic. Without warning, the entire hallway was filled with roiling balefire as Quantan blasted a few beasts that had been following him as he cleared a path through the dungeon.  
"Muwahahaha! Hey, Thaum-boy, you like that little firework display? Those lightning orcs aren't much when they're melted to the side of a dungeon, neh?", panted the short little wizard. "What? Quite glaring at me! You try and solo a pack of those nasty..." The rest was lost in a garble of cursing and over-description as Quantan pitifully attempted to pick himself up off the floor and straighten his ever-wrinkled robes.  
"HEY! Where's my staff!", cried Quan as he hopped back through the hole without heed to what might be on the other side. His staff, Stormhalter, was a token of his Wizard-hood, which had some minor magical properties. The wizard valued it too much, and refused to so much as attack with it.  
As soon as he had disappeared, Quantan hopped back out of the hole and stalked off the wrong way down the tunnel, as if he were off to slay a dragon... at least until Thaum cleared his throat and pointed the other way.  
"That way, Gandalf."  
"Shut up, Father."  
Thus, the two worst magicians in all of Kesmai paraded off down the cavernous UnderWorld to find the Skeleton Sword Master and his Black Rapier.  
  
  
  
"Hey, I'm just going by what Sy told me...", Quantan objected as he backed up with his hands in the air.  
"Oh, sure, blame it on Sy. Only you would get us lost down in this hellhole. I swear that if we walk into the back door of that undead fiend's lair, I'll kill you first, then him! What on earth were you thinking?" Thaum looked at his shoes to keep himself from getting pinned to the wall with an icespear by attacking Quan.  
With an impish grin, Quantan turned to the wall behind him, and shattered it with a powerful concussion spell.  
"Oh, great, just let everything in the area know we're here. Not to mention I'm friggin' deaf now you goofy dabbling - HEY!" Thaum had just enough time to dodge a shower of rock shards as Quantan blasted another whole in the wall of the room he had just opened.  
"Damn fool wizard," growled Thaum as he started off after Quantan. He knew very well that he was more than a little bit likely to get killed again if he interrupted Quan while he was casting, so he just followed after him at a distance. Whenever the little wizard got into one of these moods, it was best to just let him go. Eventually, he would find the lair of the Skeleton Sword Master, and all hell would break lose. The Skeleton Sword Master was a creature who's name perfectly defined it - a nasty skeleton who had somehow mastered the use of the rapier. Many adventurers had died attempting to collect the beast's blade from him, but no one had ever succeeded. Thaum was just about to question what he was doing here, when a sharp shard of rock snapped the cleric back into reality as it sliced his cheek on it's way by.  
Heck, might as well play along. Can't hurt to be safe though, eh?  
"Neh." Said the wizard as though Thaum had spoken aloud.  
"HEY! Quit reading my thoughts and concentrate on your casting!" Randomly, Thaum began to cast spells of protection. Protection from fire, shielding, protection from cold, protection from death spells, protection from lightning, and whatever else came to mind were just a few of the spells that he cast on Quan while they moved from wall to wall, smashing them like limestone under a blacksmith's hammer.  
They were running now, blasting wall after wall, without so much as breaking stride through it all. Every now and then, some undead beast would be in one of the rooms or hallways. They moved to attack nearly instantly, not being bound to this world; Thaum sent them to the burning hells just as quickly by severing that connection with a simple banishing spell. Time lost meaning as they ran.  
Little did they know, they had originally started on the wrong side of the UnderWorld, and were quickly approaching the lair of the Skeleton Sword Master on the other side.  
  
  
  
Thaum was just about to start casting spells of protection on himself when he slammed into Quan's back, collapsing them both into a large cavernous room.  
"You goofy wizard! You don't just stop like that without giving a guy warning!"  
"Perhaps if you hadn't been asleep while you were running, yer popeness..."  
Both were cut short of their bantering by a most curious sound. It sounded something like a skeleton moving about, but it was much too loud to be just one.  
Glancing up, the magic users saw a sight that no one had ever lived to tell about. Looking into the eye-sockets of an innumerable amount of skeletons, Thaum suddenly wondered why he wanted that Black Rapier so bad.If those nasty things could smile, I bet they'd be grinning from ear to ear.... It would never occur to them to run.  
Quantan, on the other hand, wasted no time on thinking before unleashing a whirlwind into the front ranks of the undead warriors. Conjured winds flung carcasses about the room, smashing them into walls, each other, the ceiling and the floor. Of course, this lasted only seconds and there was still several hundred left waiting to devour the invaders. The undead legions charged.  
Fortunately, undead creatures are extremely single-minded and as uncreative as they come. They simply moved in a British-styled attack formation, line after line.  
"Where's the Sword Master? If we can drop him, these might go too!" Shouted Thaum over the roar of Quantan's fireballs and concussion spells. When he didn't get a response, he turned and ran full speed at a group of skeletons that had begun to move along their flank. Now Thaum might not have been the best cleric, but he was an excellent student of the martial arts. Hands and arms turned away sword blades as sure as any shield might have, while legs and feet separated skulls from carcasses and snapped bones that held his enemies together. He moved through his forms, becoming one with his art as his body became a blur of death dealing strikes and life-saving blocks, while his spirit challenged those of the undead on a higher level. While unknown to him at the time, Thaum was creating a fighting style that would later be called the Holy Tempest, and would spawn a new generation of martial-artist monks.  
Quantan, unable to stop the oncoming ranks of undead warriors, had been driven to use his precious staff to defend himself, twirling and swinging it with deadly accuracy. He didn't seem to notice that the staff had taken on a life of it's own, unleashing beams of power from its ends, which sliced through bone and stone alike. Though he wielded the staff as though it was an extension of his body, it wasn't enough. Lacking the brute strength and skill of his counterpart, Quan was forced into an alcove to defend himself.  
Seeing this, the Holy Tempest raged even greater than before. Call upon the ultimate power of his god, he tore the holy symbol from its leather thong that hung around his neck. Though seemingly impossible, he moved faster, gaining greater and greater momentum as he moved. His voice rose from roars of defiance and promise of death into that of High Chant. Words became solid and corporeal as he chanted, forming his holy symbol into a staff of pure holy power. Then, time seemed to stop for all but the Holy Tempest. He tore his way through the vile undead ranks as though they stood still, his very presence shattering their unholy bindings and banishing them into the netherworld. When the last skeleton fell, time resumed its normal pace. The Holy Tempest was now just a cleric again, dropping to the floor on top of legs that no longer supported him. Thaum gave into fatigue as the darkness closed about him, falling into a sleep undisturbable. His holy symbol was no more, but in its place was cross of the purest white, the bottom of the crucifix pointed like a dagger.  
  
  
  
Quantan nearly fell over as suddenly, all his foes vanished into dust as though they had never been there at all. The only thing left in the room larger than a pile of annihilated bones, besides himself, was a familiar body in the center of the room. Dropping the staff as he moved to help his friend, the wizard was nearly half way to Thaum when he heard a mind-shredding shriek from the top of the cavern.  
Atop a ledge well raised from the ground was a skeleton. Not just any skeleton, but what could only be the Skeleton Sword Master himself. With a cat-like leap, the Sword Master leapt from his perch to soundlessly land between the wizard and the fallen cleric.  
Quantan paused for only a second to regard what could have almost been considered comical. A skeleton, standing nearly seven feet tall, wearing a plumed hat on his rictal head, a sheathed rapier on a ragged belt than hung from what used to be a waist, and a pair of tattered knee-high boots. Not quite what I was expecting...  
That was the only thought that Quantan had time to get in though, as the Sword Master drew his rapier in one swift movement and charged with another. Realizing that he was weaponless, Quantan called upon the pure wellspring of his magic, forming a purely magical staff of flames just in time to block the first cut of the Black Rapier.  
Strikes and parries scarred the air between the wizard and the Sword Master as they simply circled each other, weapons exchanging blows faster than the mind could possibly react. Sparks began to fly as the weapons collided, then the sparks became flames, and then slivers of pure power. Time passed unchecked as the two moved in their dance of death, each knowing that to err was to surely perish.  
Quantan, being only human, was the first to make a mistake. The Skeleton Sword Master surprised him with a foolish lunge, only to lash out with its bony leg, which caught the wizard in the chest. The kick threw Quantan through the air into the nearest wall, causing him to lose his mental grip upon the staff and collapse onto all fours on the floor. The Sword Master wasted no time moving in to cut him down, but never got the chance. Rising to one knee, Quantan Amroth lashed out with the most powerful spell known to wizard: IceSpear. The air in the room seemed to compress before his outstretched hands, then condense into water and freeze in the shape of a massive cone before blasting from his hands at incalculable speeds. The icespear caught the Skeleton Sword Master directly in the chest, driving him into the wall across and pinning him to it.  
Drained, the wizard fell back to his hands and knees, unable to support himself any longer. Looking up at the pinned skeleton on the wall, he knew that there was only one thing left to do. He drug himself over to where Thaum lay with the holy symbol still gripped in his hands, as though it were part of him. After some prying, he removed the cross from Thaum's hands, and slowly stood. Taking the crucifix in one hand, he drew back and threw it at the pinned sword master. Striking it with a concussion spell while it was in mid-flight was all it took to make it cross the room and take the Sword Master in the head, before he collapsed into exhaustion on top of Thaum.  
Though neither man saw it, the Holy Dagger buried itself perfectly into the Skeleton Sword Master's head, imploding the unholy skull. The dagger then exploded into a beam of holy light searing into the center of the ceiling of the cavern. The light burned through the layers of the earth, cutting it's way from the heart hell itself into the High Heavens.  
When the light dissipated, a single ray of sunlight shone down through to the core of the earth where the two men lay, and enveloped them in it's protecting light. All that remained of the Skeleton Sword Master and his undead legions were piles of bone dust and a sparkling black rapier covered by a tattered plumed hat. The two best and worst magicians in the world lived to have many more adventures, but that is a tale for another day.  



End file.
